Weddings and the Catholic Church

Parent Cafe
61

@austinmshauri

If a Catholic GETS an annulment–mere asking is not enough–then the marriage is void from the beginning. When a Catholic requests an annulment, the other spouse is contacted and is given the opportunity to fight the annulment and contradict the requester’s evidence. In that case, the annulment MAY be denied. The marriage tribunal will decide after reviewing all the evidence.

If the Church grants an annulment, then both parties can (re)marry in the Church.

Fault doesn’t come into it.

The children are NOT considered illegitimate. As long as there was a “putative marriage” as that term is used in the Church, the children are legitimate.

62

Interesting what you learn on CC. I had always thought that as long as a wedding was not preformed as a Catholic sacrament, a divorced person could get married in the Church. As Jonri notes, persons married in other faiths would have to have their first marriage reviewed by the Catholic Church and declared invalid in order to be married as a Catholic. What I don’t get, is why if a Catholic marries outside the church that is not considered a marriage and then can get married in the church without an annulment. But if a non-Catholic marries in another faith, and then wants to marry a Catholic, they have to get an annulment.

The official word seems to be that Catholics can attend “presumptively valid” marriages in another faith, but attending and participating in weddings that could be considered invalid under canon law is more problematic. One source said:

63

No. It’s not that the marriage “never happened”, it’s that the marriage was not held in good faith, so the parties are no longer bound by the marriage.

From the Catholic Bishop’s web site:
*“Annulment” is an unfortunate word that is sometimes used to refer to a Catholic “declaration of nullity.” Actually, nothing is made null through the process. Rather, a Church tribunal (a Catholic Church court) declares that a marriage thought to be valid according to Church law actually fell short of at least one of the essential elements required for a binding union.

For a Catholic marriage to be valid, it is required that: (1) the spouses are free to marry; (2) they are capable of giving their consent to marry; (3) they freely exchange their consent; (4) in consenting to marry, they have the intention to marry for life, to be faithful to one another and be open to children; (5) they intend the good of each other; and (6) their consent is given in the presence of two witnesses and before a properly authorized Church minister. Exceptions to the last requirement must be approved by Church authority.

If a marriage is declared null, does it mean that the marriage never existed?

No. It means that a marriage that was thought to be valid civilly and canonically was in fact not valid according to Church law. A declaration of nullity does not deny that a relationship existed. It simply states that the relationship was missing something that the Church requires for a valid marriage.

If a declaration of nullity is granted, are the children considered illegitimate?

No. A declaration of nullity has no effect on the legitimacy of children who were born of the union following the wedding day, since the child’s mother and father were presumed to be married at the time that the child was born. Parental obligations remain after a marriage may be declared null.*

Also, both parties are consulted in an annulment proceeding. Often both spouses sign off on the petition, and if not, the non-signing spouse is contacted by the tribunal and allowed to say their piece, which could result in the annulment not being granted.

64

The children don’t have to be born into a ‘putative marriage’ to be baptized catholic. Mine weren’t and both were baptized without any questions asked or issues.

65

@jonri, Thank you. That explains a lot. What kind of evidence is requiored for an annulment? Is just not wanting to be married anymore enough? I had a friend many years ago who vehemently opposed their spouse’s request for a divorce. I wondered at the time why a person would want to be married to someone who didn’t want to be married to them, but now I suspect the reasons may have been deeper than I understood.

66

My wedding 26 years ago was a full Catholic ceremony blessed by the Church. The presiding priest was the only one we had to talk to about it. I was neither religious nor baptized at the time. The only other rule was that at least one of the witnesses had to be Catholic.

She did remind me that it would be a trivial matter for her to get it annulled if she wanted. I went through RCIA a couple years later. Now it would be harder for her.

Two more data points on annulments: I know someone who tried to fight an annulment. It went through anyway because he had a child with one of his mistresses. After the annulment he could have gotten married in the church again.

Also, my sister got her first marriage annulled even though neither were Catholic at the time. She converted in her late 30s and wanted the opportunity if she met someone. She got married a while later in a civil ceremony with a judge and only two witnesses. No idea what the priest thought of it but she continues to work in lay ministry.

67

@austinmshauri

A desire to get out of the marriage in and of itself is NOT enough.

I’m not a theologian, so this is a layperson’s understanding. An annulment proceeding is a VERY different kind of proceeding than a divorce. For example, usually the spouses are NOT permitted to hear the testimony. Unlike common law, canon law assumes that witnesses are more likely to tell the truth if the spouses have no way of knowing what they said.

Usually, the evidence involves things that happened or existed PRIOR TO the marriage, not during it. So, the focus tends to be on whether there were any impediments to the marriage and whether the parties freely consented to the marriage.

For my generation, one of the most common grounds for an annulment was that the couple married because the woman was pregnant and they would not have married but for that. So, if you got engaged and after you agreed to marry, the wife became pregnant and you just moved up the ceremony that, in most cases, would NOT be grounds for an annulment. But if the couple had no intention of marrying and did so only because of the pregnancy, you’d probably get an annulment. (The Church implicitly recognizes it pushed a lot of people in this situation into marriage; it no longer does so.)

Another ground is that you’re “closely” related. The Church has MUCH stricter rules about marriage between relatives than most US states do. This is famously the ground upon which Rudy Guiliani had his first marriage annulled so he could marry Donna Hanover. His first wife was something like his third cousin, which is okay in New York State, but not the Church.

Another ground is not being “open to children.” I knew a devout Catholic who found out on her wedding night that her new H had had a vasectomy. Not only was he not “open to children,” but she didn’t give informed consent because she wouldn’t have married him if she had known.

In other situations, one or both spouses were not capable of consent or did not give informed consent.

Again, it’s usually what happened PRIOR to the marriage. If the marriage is declared invalid by the Church, then both parties are free to remarry in almost all cases. Again, fault is not considered.

68

It has nothing to do with the first marriage being Religious or not. 2 of my brothers-in-law were told to get annulments in order for the marriages to be blessed. One did. The other - who was married in a civil ceremony, was not baptized, short marriage - would not and did not get an annulment. He and sis were married in a civil ceremony performed by a gay priest friend who was no longer actively ministering.

Canon law is odd to outsiders, but there it is. I don’t always agree with the rules - it can be easier for some people rather than others to get annulments w/o rhyme or reason. (The abusive ex of a family friend who got one and married again, for example.) It’s just one of the things to deal with when you want to marry in the Church.

69

I remember the uproar among Catholics when Jackie Kennedy got some kind of special dispensation to marry Aristotle Onassis, a divorced man. At that time there were many people whose lives had been blighted by the rules that were waived in her case. (I was raised Catholic.)

70

I’d be very interested to know more about the natural birth control class @zoosermom mentioned in post #59. Didn’t know couples were required to do such things. Is this class taught by the parish priest? Is it a customary requirement or does it vary by diocese?

71

I am Jewish and H was raised Catholic. When we were getting married, I told him I would be ok with having a priest present along with the rabbi. It wasn’t going to influence my religious beliefs and I felt it would be respectful to my then future MIL. H went to visit the priest at his parish, who remembered him from when he participated in folk Mass. H told the priest of our plans and the priest said it would be okay as long as I agreed to raise the children as Catholics. H told him that we already had two children and our son had a ritual bris and our D a synagogue naming. At that point, the priest looked at him and said: “My son, you are far too immature for the sacrament of marriage.” H said “Well, given that I am 35 years old, I think that I will not wait around for you to decide I am grown up enough to get married.” We wound up having a cantor and no priest at our wedding, which was held in a hall, not a shul.

My cousin actually did sign the paper and had her son baptized. When he was about 5 years old, she discovered her H was cheating, threw him out and divorced him. She then burned his baptismal papers and had him bar mitzvahed when he turned 13. The ex remarried in the Church but I am not sure if he got to do that because my cousin destroyed the baptismal papers or because the marriage was declared invalid or if he just paid someone off. This was about 30 years ago. My cousin’s second H was an Orthodox Jew!

I have a friend who paid thousands of dollars to secure an annulment for her intended H. They were divorced within 3 years because he was a cheater, which was why his first marriage ended (well before my friend met him). I think part of the money went to a payoff to the first wife to say she never wanted kids.

72

@jonri -

I always thought when I was growing up (Jewish) that if a Catholic marriage was annulled then the children were deemed illegitimate and that was why many women fought the annulment process. I also thought that many women in the 1950’s and 1960’s fought the annulment to prevent their H’s from remarrying in the Church. My thoughts are gathered from growing up in a very Irish and Italian area and hearing the grownups talk.

73

@rutgersmamma , the NFP class became a requirement in my parish maybe 8 years ago. It’s based on temps and discharge and other fun things. Taught by trained practitioners. There was a whole group of folks who decided that it was the right thing to do and persuaded the pastor at the time to go along with it. Most of them had several children all stairstepped about 18 months apart, FWIW. Happy it wasn’t a requirement 30 odd years ago.

74

I attended Yeshiva as a child and we were taught NEVER to walk into a church, EVER. When I was about 9, my very close friend invited me to go to Church with her. My sister, 2 years younger, went as well. I didn’t explode and it was interesting. I did not kneel, as I had been taught that Jews don’t kneel to G-d and I didn’t go up for Communion because I recognized that it would be wrong. My sister tried to kneel and I pulled her up. She ran up to the communion line and I tried to pull her back - it was such a scene. People thought she was trying to get communion early and just hadn’t been confirmed yet and they were laughing and I was too afraid to say we were Jewish. Flash forward, years later and my sister marries a Catholic guy, but at City Hall. After they got divorced, she converted to the Episcopal Church. Ironically, my sister-in-law also converted to the Episcopal church from Catholic. H and I joke that we are the only mixed marriage couple we know whose siblings are the same religion as each other and neither of them are the same religion as either of us!

For years, until she became non-ambulatory, I used to take MIL to church regularly. H refused to set foot in there. I felt that it was more respectful of my own religious tenet to honor my mother and father (and in laws) than to honor the rule I was taught to never walk into a church.

75

I think a lot of this varies by diocese and what the bishop permits, and how far the priest will push. DW and I married 29 years ago this week. She’s a cradle Catholic, but wasn’t a practicing Catholic at the time we wed. I was baptized and raised Lutheran but was a pretty hardcore agnostic at the time we wed. DW didn’t want to be married in a Catholic church with a full Mass and all the traditional trappings, but she was still Catholic enough that it was important to her to have our marriage recognized by the Church. As it happened, she knew some pretty progressive priests in influential positions in the archdiocese. We met with the priest who made the recommendations to the archbishop on these matters. He was pleased to hear that I was baptized Christian, saying that wasn’t an absolute requirement, but it made things a lot easier. Even better, I could produce my baptismal certificate to prove it. His only real requirement was that I would not object if DW wanted to raise our children Catholic. I agreed to that, knowing it still meant something to her. And that was pretty much that—no further religious tests or qualifications, no mandatory instruction, nothing. We were married outdoors in a beautiful ceremony officiated by two dear friends of DW, one a Lutheran minister and the other a Southern Baptist minister (from a progressive wing that had broken with the Southern Baptist Convention after it was taken over by hard line conservatives). Our marriage was registered with the Archdiocese and has been considered valid by the Church ever since. DW has been considered a Catholic in good standing, and she even started attending Mass again once she found a progressive parish more in tune with her thinking.

Fast forward 27 years. Our eldest daughter, baptized and confirmed Catholic, wanted to marry a man who was raised Quaker, never baptized, not sure he considered himself Christian. They met with the parish priest who wasn’t concerned about the baptism thing or the prospective groom’s beliefs; the priest was more concerned with whether their intentions toward each other were honorable, and whether DD still considered herself Catholic, which she did. From there it was smooth sailing. I think they might have been required to attend three classes. They were married in our parish church, at the altar, by the parish priest, but with the same Lutheran minister who had married DW and me co-officiating. I think the Catholic priest was initially uncomfortable with allowing a Protestant minister— and a woman, no less—to preach. But the sophistication and depth of her theology, coupled with her her deft pastoral touch, blew the priest out of the water, and afterwards he couldn’t stop gushing about how honored he was to have shared the pulpit with her.

I’m sure many priests and many bishops are more rigid and old-school. But there are places in the Catholic church where this isn’t so difficult.

76

While this is essentially true, It is really true when involving Catholic/Christian persons in a failed marriage as you described. But in the case of non-Christians in a marriage that fails, all of that is not required for the Pauline Privilege to be invoked so that the the non-Christian could marry a Catholic in the Church

The devil is in the details. If a Catholic marries a non-Catholic in an invalid marriage, then if they divorce, not only is the Catholic free to marry in the Church, but also the non-Catholic…Because the entire marriage was invalid.

77

Yes. Someone who was pressured to get married, and gets divorced, would likely have the marriage determined to be void.

A spouse who refuses to have/try to have children (if married during child bearing years), and then divorces would likely have marriage declared void

A spouse who is seriously mentally ill and divorces, would likely have marriage declared void.

78

I appreciate the posts that are truly inquisitive and information seeking , the others where it’s clear the purpose is to criticize a religion that they don’t practice, not so much.

79

I’m not Catholic and neither is my daughter - but they have decided to raise the children Catholic. The class is taught by a woman - I don’t know her actual title, but she is a lay educator and the class has to do with how to time births without interfering with God’s plan. There is a lot of information on the parish’s website about it and I was really shocked that this is a thing. But, as I said, I’m not Catholic. I’m going to look at the websites of the other large parishes in the area to see if it’s done everywhere. I’ve heard (and I have no way of knowing if this is true) that this particular parish is very conservative.

My Protestant denomination is on the plain spectrum and we’ve always been in the live and let live camp. I’m very glad that my daughter is being married in our church and really wish they were raising the kids there as well, but I completely understand and respect their decision. Now, of course, I will not be shy with my opinions on Christening attire, but, really, they just have to suck up some things!

80

We did a weekend for pre-cana and I seem to remember “natural birth control” (aka the rhythm method with the addition of paying attention to signals of ovulation from the women) as one of the “classes”. It was actually a very good experience and not as heavily religious as I thought it would be.

I still remember the discussion with the priest about marriage and his asking about having kids (which we both wanted). I asked if someone would be barred from marriage if they knew they could not physically have kids. He said you had to be “open” to having kids, but did not get a full answer about the situation in which someone had been told they could not have children due to a physical or medical condition.